Cleveland's not at the head of the class, but it's not at the back, either

Cleveland is, essentially, a C student in a UCLA economist's study of education levels in major American cities.

The Washington Posttakes a look at new data compiled by economist William Yu.

“In a study set to be released in a few days, he constructed a 'city human capital index,' or CHCI, that measures the average amount of schooling attained in a given city, county or metropolitan area, as recorded by the Census Bureau,” The Post says.

For children and young adults under 25, Prof. Yu “measures how much education they are likely to receive, based on elementary and secondary school enrollment rates in the area and on college enrollment, for those over 18.”

Each year of schooling gets10 points. The D.C. metro area is No. 1, with a score of 140.5 (or 14 school years, two years of college), followed by Boston and San Francisco.

In Prof. Yu's study of the 30 largest metro areas, Cleveland ranked No. 20 with a score of 132, or a bit more than 13 years of school. That's below peer cities such as St. Louis, Cincinnati and Detroit, but it's better than Orlando, Tampa, Phoenix, Dallas, Los Angeles, Houston and other places generally thought to be more conducive to knowledge workers and economic growth.

The Post labels the performance of Cincinnati, Detroit and Cleveland something of a surprise.

“The overall pattern is that the coasts, the plains and the Midwest all perform quite well, with the South notably less educated than the rest of the country,” according to the newspaper.

The correlation with unemployment rates “is rougher, but still statistically significant,” The Post adds. “These figures alone don't show causation. It could be that more educated people just flock to richer places and don't themselves make those places rich. But given the evidence showing that higher earnings for educated workers is due to demand for their skills, it's not too big a leap to say that more education leads to richer cities or counties.”

The Dayton Business Journal reports that Ohio was No. 39 in business tax climate in a new study compiled by the nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization that monitors tax policy.

“In the foundation's newly released 2013 State Business Tax Climate Index, the Buckeye State scored good marks for unemployment insurance and its corporate tax rate,” according to the Dayton newspaper. “However, it got dinged in areas such as individual income tax and property tax.”

Wyoming ranked No. 1 on the list, followed by South Dakota and Nevada. The lowest-ranked states were New York, New Jersey and California.

Meanwhile, Forbes.com compiles a listing of the 20 best cities for working mothers, and Ohio fares really well.

Columbus is No. 1 on the list, while Cincinnati is No. 4 and Cleveland is No. 7.

The rankings are based on factors including the cost of living, job opportunities, earnings potential, average commute safety, health care access and education.

Win some, lose some

Bloomberg reports that the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal by two units of Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp. “that sought to recoup $230 million they say they spent to acquire power for serving their Pennsylvania retail power customers.”

The court “left intact a Pennsylvania state court decision that said a 1998 settlement precluded FirstEnergy's Metropolitan Edison and Pennsylvania Electric from recovering the disputed money through higher rates,” according to Bloomberg.

The news service notes the costs stem from “transmission line losses” — the electricity that dissipates because of friction or resistance as power travels through lines.

Dead or alive?

A Cleveland Clinic researcher is mentioned in this New York Times story about a significant shift by the Social Security Administration to limit access to its death records amid concerns about identity theft.

The change “is beginning to hamper a range of research, including federal assessments of hospital safety and efforts by the financial industry to spot consumer fraud,” The Times reports.

For instance, The Times says a research group that produces reports on organ transplant survival rates “is facing delays because of the extra work it must do to determine whether patients are still alive.” That's important because the federal agency that runs Medicare “uses the data to determine whether some transplant programs have such poor track records that they should be cut off from government financing.”

The newspaper reports that 4 million deaths last year were expunged from a publicly available Social Security Administration master file.

Jesse D. Schold, a health researcher at the Clinic, tells The Times that holes in the master file, which will only grow larger, already have compromised his investigation into mortality rates among living kidney donors.

“Confirming deaths of subjects by surveying every state would be prohibitively burdensome, he said. And using the index compiled by the C.D.C., which pays states to submit refined data, would be unaffordable, costing perhaps $30,000 to $50,000 a year,” the newspaper reports. “By contrast, an annual subscription to the Social Security file, with unlimited searches, can be bought for as little as $995. Genealogy Web sites make the data available on the Internet at little or no cost.”

Dr. Schold tells The Times, “It's very critical that we have an objective way to measure deaths. Otherwise we're getting the data from the centers we're measuring, and that's problematic” because they cannot track all former patients until death.